Tech giant Amazon is celebrating its first Montana facility opening in Missoula. The 72,000 square foot warehouse northwest of Missoula will serve as a delivery station for orders coming from larger Amazon facilities across the country.
Site leader Mabel Funderburk said the facility’s 100 employees can ship up to 7,000 packages a day, or more during peak holiday demand.
“While our Missoula, our beautiful Missoula is sleeping, that is when our associates are here to process all of those packages for us,” Funderburk said.
The Amazon facility opening comes just a week after two major wood manufacturers announced their closures. Pyramid Mountain Lumber and Roseburg Forest Products in Missoula County announced their shutdowns, laying off around 260 employees total.
University of Montana economist Bryce Ward says the coinciding events offer an example of Montana grappling with a shrinking natural resource economy and a growing tech sector.
“The historical story of losing timber jobs was, ‘oh, we’re losing our timber jobs and nothing’s going to come and replace them.’ But the Roseburg Lumber story in Missoula is, ‘well, we lost these jobs, but we added these other ones.”
Gov. Greg Gianforte says the state can still develop its natural resources while also transitioning workers to new industries that are growing.
“There are new opportunities. And the department of labor and industry wants to help with job training, internships, apprenticeships, to help reskill people for jobs that are in emerging industries.”
Both Amazon representatives and Gianforte say they expect the company to expand further into Montana.
